While some of us – 400,500 in Maguindanao? – are still living in the past, ruling by clan wars, ritualistic tortures and mutilations, bloodbaths and annihilations of the innocent to express contempt of one’s enemies, a neighbor of ours is already living in the future.

Out there in the desert, the second largest Arab economy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has got it all plotted out: Economic Plan 2030. Nor is it a pipe dream, a case of sloganeering, or mere government propaganda, because 2030, while 20 years away, is already here -- in the seven emirates of the union (even if only Abu Dhabi, the capital, and Dubai are so famous that the rest can afford to stay anonymous).

When Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of UAE and ruler of Dubai, welcomed an international delegation of journalists to his palace last week, he said, “Many years ago a German reporter wrote, ‘Sheikh Mohammed is dreaming.’ Now I can tell him, I followed my dream. And here we are.”

“Here” is the future, alive in the present:

With its limited natural resources and the need to import goods in a consumer-driven market, water consumption is extremely high at 550 liters per person per day. The aim today: reduce consumption by 40 percent in three years, so that from one cubic meter of water, 600 kg of tomatoes can be produced.

By January, 2010, chemicals that puncture the ozone layer will be banned.

Desalination costs US$3 billion a year. A new construction code tempers water and energy use, even architectural design.

There’ll be enough oil for another 100 years. That’s why Masdar City, “the global home for renewable energy,” is taking shape on $15 billion seed money and $250 million in green tech funds.

The future is being built no longer on sand but the non-oil sector, a 7 percent growth in GDP from non-oil sources. And you thought it was all oil, oil, oil!